


Batter Up

by thegirlnamedcove



Series: Ante Up [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Laura Hale, Arguments, Competitive Flirting, F/F, Femslash, Flirting, Play Fighting, Unbeta'ed, aggressive flirting, batting cages, femslashfebruary2018, laura needs a break, only speaking characters listed, or at least non serious fighting, wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 07:56:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13608969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirlnamedcove/pseuds/thegirlnamedcove
Summary: Two weeks after the Butt Grab Incident, Laura’s stomach was still in tight knots, so much so that she’d started to journal about it.





	Batter Up

**Author's Note:**

> There is a part one to this, which you will definitely need to read for context.
> 
> I seriously started writing at 1:30 (ish) and am now finishing this up at 7:00. I vomited this out. This story happened to me in the way car crashes do. I have a deadline on an original book that I am ignoring because this story forcibly crawled from my brain.

Two weeks after the Butt Grab Incident, Laura’s stomach was still in tight knots, so much so that she’d started to _journal_ about it.

Being the alpha, even with as small a pack as they had, came with a lot of responsibilities. She was constantly running somewhere, meeting someone, keeping a tight schedule between each bullet point on her list that did not accommodate traffic jams. To keep it straight and keep on top of it, she employed something she called her auxiliary brain, a leather bound black day planner that covered six months in increasing levels of detail down to the hour. It went everywhere with her. She’d bought a bigger purse just to make room for it. And at the end of each day she sat at the vanity in her room and spread it open, to go over and sort out everything that had happened.

Completed tasks were highlighted in red, so that she could pick out the places where the paper was bare more easily, and know what she hadn’t addressed. New phone numbers were scribbled in the margins, and then entered into her phone with as much detail about the person as the character limit would allow.

_Derek, with whom you share parents._

_Derek, the mechanic, overcharges._

_Derek, from the San Fran pack, fox._

New appointments in pencil were gone over in pen, symbols were added to determine level of importance, slender lines were drawn along the monthly calendar to show how long she had left until a deadline, or how long she should keep an eye on a situation before she could be sure no new problems would arise.

And amidst this insane hyperfocus, her life in both the micro and the macro, was a series of doodles that she’d long been refusing to contemplate. A moodboard, of sorts, little scrawls of faces or animals, half conversations she wanted to test out, a few math problems to help her anxiety in waiting rooms. And a whole hell of a lot of drawings of tools.

She didn’t know what the name was for the wine cork slash plunger doohickey Braeden had used to pull dents on her car door, nor did she ever plan to find out, but she sure remembered every line of the damn thing, the way it arced and moved in Braeden’s hands as she forced the sheet metal into submission with it, and her mind had seemingly lighted on that one detail to replay in her mind on a loop, that one tool to draw and redraw, sometimes without even noticing.

She’d marked the incident (BGI) on her calendar with everything else, drawn a line out to cover a week, just so she could keep it on her radar, watch out for any future advances. She told herself it was so she could intercept them. Avoid them. It didn’t feel like the truth, though.

But she hadn’t stopped thinking about it when the line ended and a week had passed, and she kept drawing that stupid tool like she was pining over it, specifically. Two weeks later, and she was sitting at her vanity, gel pen in hand, tracing over the edges of the pencil drawing carefully to preserve it, and feeling outraged at her own behaviour.

When she’d finished--because god knows she couldn’t control the compulsion--she pulled back and threw the pen down on the table with a clatter. She scrubbed her hands over her face, roughly, took a few pointed breaths in and out. Downstairs she could hear pots and pans clanking together, signalling that Derek had started dinner and she needed to wrap it up and head down to be social. She leaned forward again, and flipped to the daily view.

Tomorrow, Saturday, she would be meeting a representative from the local snake shifters. They’d formed an alliance almost as soon as they’d arrived in Hale territory, happy to let her stay in charge of watching the Nemeton and offer occasional assistance, and she’d touched base with them once every three months ever since. They could perform glamours, a stronger sort of hypnosis to gain favor and influence, and she would be an idiot not to keep that resource in her arsenal.

After that, she needed to rally the pack for a Costco trip--god, werewolves in Costco was always such a disaster--then there was a scheduled meal break to be sure she wouldn’t forget. Then at two in the afternoon, the Beacon Hills Community Center was having a field day at the big park on Vine St, and as a committee member she’d be required to attend. Only one hour though, to show she cared, and then assuming she wasn’t forgetting anything she would be able to beg off and go home, relish in two whole hours of no obligations before the pack descended on the house once again demanding dinner.

She practically salivated at the thought.

That done she slammed the planner closed, hefted herself up to her feet and made for the stairs. Base on the smell, Derek was making spinach parmesan pasta, the kind with white wine in the sauce, and she would commit homicide to get that even on a good day. Right now, with the vision of Braeden’s sure hands holding onto the dent pulling tool and the touch memory of Braeden’s sure hands on her, she was especially in need of some comfort food and easy distractions.

 

***

 

The Costco trip, as predicted, was a shit show. She should start including that in her planner, so maybe she could shame herself for continuing to shop there, even though she knew she’d never cancel the membership. She had too many people to feed with too big of appetites, and Costco sold enough different cuts of beef to reconstruct a cow if you so chose.

She’d tossed the idea around in her head before. For full moons, you know?

Still, for all the convenience and cost savings of the bulk store, it never got any easier. She’d brought Derek and Boyd in the truck, hopeful that they could help with the heavy lifting while she ran the list, and had been immediately abandoned while they stood in the clothing section arguing over sweat resistant pullovers. By the time she’d rounded up the small stuff--cereal, peanut butter, produce--and come back to collect them it had shifted into a relationship talk, all coded and stilted in that way the two best friends seemed to prefer. Like open communication would literally kill them.

“I just don’t know if a hike is the right idea, you know? Like what if she doesn’t like the hike? Then I’ll have bought the hiking shoes for nothing, and that’s a waste of forty five dollars.”

“Erica will like the hike, man. She loves being outdoors. Stiles, though, god. Where’s the sunscreen display?”

“Yeah, he’ll need it. By the door, maybe?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t go on the hike. Or maybe just not all together.”

“No, man, you are not leaving me alone on this. I can’t handle the...terrain. Not alone.”

“You’ve got the shoes. Those shoes are a done deal, you know?”

Laura resisted the urge, quite well she thought, to claw her own eyes out and deposit them in each of their mouths.

The meat section distracted them--a blessing and a curse--and after raiding it for everything it was worth they’d piled up a whole cart of just snacks for the field day. By the time they hit the registers she was well done with keeping track of two grown ass adults and reminding them not to wander.

‘Herding cats’, her mom used to call it. Felt about right.

They went over the allotted time by twenty minutes, which meant her scheduled mealtime took place in the backseat with a lap full of McDonald’s, and then once they’d swung home to offload the groceries and change into outdoor wear, they were off to field day, with Erica and Stiles and Scott and Kira all in cars following them.

Cora, the condemnable bastard, had claimed an upset stomach and elected to stay home.

Tanning Field took up three blocks in the middle of town, featuring a basketball court, a tennis court, and a big grass meadow in between that was used for football, soccer, baseball, and tag. The Community Center staff had divided it up into sections for each, with a few booths at the center selling hot dogs and soda and popsicles for the kids. The Hale pack burst apart almost as soon as they entered, putting off happy chemosignals like they were trying to gas the place out, and Laura couldn’t help but relax a little. One hour, she could watch them all have fun, and then she could go home to her bathtub and the paper bag from Lush that was hidden under her sink and be alone.

She made her way over to the concessions, bought herself a water and a small bag of chips, and then found a place to settle and watch the makeshift batting cage. Someone had set up some fencing, arranged in a rectangle and open on one end, and then set a mat about forty feet away from it for the pitcher to stand on. Who that was seemed to rotate out based on whoever was nearby and interested, and those up to bat would get three tries before passing it off to the next person in line.

It was actually pretty rare for anyone to hit the ball, which she was surprised to see. By the time she’d tipped the last of the potato chip crumbs into her mouth, maybe half an hour later, she’d seen ten people come up to bat, a total of thirty swings, and only four had connected. Of those four, two bounced down to the ground in front of the batter, ineffectual and impotent. Maybe it was a werewolf thing; the expectation that others be good at sports or at least practiced at them. Still, though, even if she tried to allow for human limitations, this was just…

“Pathetic.”

The deep voice beside her was familiar, as was the outline of the body as she sat down. When Laura turned to look Braeden was sitting with her knees up and splayed out wide, a bored expression on her face and a vapor pen in her fingers.

Huh. She’d always guessed that the rasp in Braeden’s voice had come from the injury to her throat.

“You trying to quit?” she asked, gesturing towards the device.

Braeden shook her head, “Nah, just trying to cut down on carcinogens. Can’t live forever, not like you.”

“Wolves don’t live forever,” Laura scoffed.

“Sure you do.” Braeden lifted the pen to her lips, took a deep pull in. It wasn’t like sucking on a straw, where the cheeks would hollow and the lips purse in a tight ring. This pull was coming from the lungs, and as her face stayed placid her ribcage expanded, chest pushing forward and back suddenly straight. It caused the neckline of her tank top to draw down, just an inch, and Laura averted her eyes with a hot aura of shame prickling across her skin. “You’re like jellyfish. So long as nobody kills you, you just keep going and going and going.”

“We can die of old age. The healing isn’t endless.”

Braeden shrugged.

“I saw Derek fall eight stories once. Walked it off like a sprain.”

Which...Laura had to concede. She had a tendency to think of humans as being made of tissue paper. Twist just a little bit wrong and it would be torn down the center. It wasn’t just that their injuries lasted, it was that it was easier for them to get injured in the first place. It didn’t often register for her that the equal opposite might be true: that next to their idea of normal healing she might look like a Terminator.

Her lips curved up in a small smile at the thought.

“You tried it yet?” Braeden asked, although her voice was flat and disinterested.

“No. I’m just killing time.”

Braeden hummed, pulled from the pen again. “Shame. It’d be fun to watch you strike out too.”

Laura turned twisted her upper body to the side to face her, her eyes narrowed down to slits.

“Thought I was big and powerful and immortal a second ago?”

“Well, you won’t _die_ ,” she laughed, “but that’s not exactly success. You and your prissy heels don’t seem like the type to know your way around a bat.”

Laura glanced down at her shoes on reflex. They were heeled, sure, maybe four inches, but it was nothing excessive and the base was broad, better at distributing her weight. When her gaze came back up she saw Braeden rolling her eyes.

“Bet I can do better in heels than you can in tennis shoes.”

She extended a hand, and Braeden studied it, a frown on her brow, but eventually shook it. Laura jumped to her feet--maybe she was showing off a little bit--and got in line, a low simmering anger under her skin.

Five minutes later she accepted the bat and stepped into the fences. The woman pitching stood idle, waiting for her to finish swinging the bat at the air until she’d settled on a stance. Laura nodded, finally, and the pitcher wound up, muscles tight, and threw the ball. It was fast, leaving her fingers like a shot from a canon, and Laura started her swing a few seconds too late, with all her power behind it. The ball hit the fence with a chorus of metallic clinks, her bat flew through empty air, and the momentum carried her bodily forward until she was sprawled on her knees and her face in the dirt.

Braeden’s laugh was rich, and rough, and unbridled as it carried across the field.

“Good job, fearless leader! Great follow through!”

“Oh yeah!” the shout tore out of her, and she was shoving up and onto her feet again before she registered the movement. Beside her, the two people waiting in line hedged back a few steps, but she barely noticed, too preoccupied swiping the dirt off her leggings and shaking out her tunic shirt. “Let’s see you do better, smokey!”

Braeden scowled, pocketed the vapor pen. She was up and across the field in a few steps, and she ripped the bat from Laura’s hand and shoved her out of the pocket of the fence. She squared off her shoulders, nodded at the pitcher, and when the next ball came--fast and hot--she swung and hit it head on.

The ball bunted back into the field, flying half the way to the pitcher before going to ground and leaving a divot in the grass.

It was Laura’s turn to grin now, and she slapped Braeden on the shoulder.

“Sure showed me there, huh?”

“Shut up,” she snarled, and nodded at the pitcher to throw another one.

The woman shifted where she stood. “I don’t know if I’m quite comfortable participating--”

“Just do it!” Braeden snapped. She shouldered Laura out of the way and crouched lower, shifting the bat up and over her shoulder.

The woman sighed, exasperated, but wound up again to throw the ball. This time when Braeden connected it flew straight, up and over the pitcher’s head, far enough that on a real field it would be at second base, at least.

“Okay, fine,” Laura grumbled, “So you made Junior Varsety with that. Give me the bat, I can make it too.”

Laura reached for the handle, stepped into Braeden’s space, but Braeden held fast.

“No! I’ve still got one left, I can do better.” She jerked the bat back and Laura was pulled with it.

“You interrupted my turn, I’ve still got two!”

Laura tugged Braeden closer, unwilling to give it up, and her free hand flew up to hold tight to Braeden’s shoulder, like the leverage could give her an advantage.

“You can wait, princess, I’m the one in charge right now!”

“Oh yeah? Is that what you are?!”

A loose crowd was forming around them, of that Laura was sure. She could sense the warmth of their bodies and hear the distance of their voices growing smaller. She didn’t care, though. For once, the lifelong agenda of ‘ingratiate yourself to the humans’ wasn’t even in the back of her mind. The only thing in this whole park that she cared about was the woman before her, the bat in her hands, and the violent flush to her features, showing even through her dark toned skin.

She crowded her forward, toward the line of the fence, and let her teeth drop just enough for Braeden to see when she pulled her lips back in a snarl.

“You think you can take me, honey?”

“Yeah,” Braeden breathed, and something in her stance changed. She went loose, liquid, and dropped down a few inches like she was readying for a blow. It all should’ve served as a warning to Laura, but she was too busy watching the color rise on Braeden’s cheeks.

Suddenly she let go of the bat, and with her now empty hands Braeden braced against Laura’s shoulders and shoved. With her heels under her she overbalanced and fell back flat on her ass, and Braeden tumbled after her. The weight of her body pinned Laura down. Braeden lifted her head and grabbed a handful of Laura’s hair, looking for all the world like she intended to slam Laura’s head into the dirt a few times to make her point.

A whistle broke through the crowd and Laura swiveled her head to find the source. Derek stood on the edge of the crowd, looking as angry as she’d ever seen him, and Stiles behind him doubled over with laughter.

“Oh my god,” he gasped out, voice high and reedy, “And I thought we were bad.”

 

***

 

They all went back to the pack house to clean up, it turned out, and Laura never did get that alone time. She figured she deserved it for losing her cool, especially in front of all those humans. Sure, it’s not like she’d gone full shift or anything but...she hadn’t been watching herself. She hadn’t been controlled. And as the alpha that was one thing she could not afford to fuck up.

She changed in the laundry room into a camisole and shorts from the dryer--her grass stained shirt soaking in the sink--and made a cursory pass at the dirt on her face with a rag. When she emerged, the pack was in the living room, so she skirted around the door and made for the kitchen instead, both ears trained on their voices so they didn’t follow her.

She really didn’t need to hear the lecture, not just yet.

The second she set foot in the kitchen she heard a voice she hadn’t been paying attention to, a quick sigh and then groan, and her head shot up to see Braeden leaning against the kitchen island. She had a bag of peas pressed to her chest just under her right collarbone, and a look on her face like a wet cat.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, “You got me with the bat. I was hoping you wouldn’t see the bruises, though.”

“I what?” Laura’s eyebrows crept up her forehead, and the sour feeling in her gut got worse.

She stepped closer, tilted her head to try and see the skin underneath the improvised ice pack, but Braeden shied away.

“It’s fine. Consequence of playing with wolves.”

“That doesn’t make it okay.” Laura glared, and reached out to lay her fingers at the edge of the bag. “Can I see?”

Braeden huffed but shrugged. She pulled the bag of peas away to reveal an angry purple bruise and turned her face away to study the refrigerator.

Laura pressed her fingers around the edges, drawing a faint hiss from Braeden’s lips, and then laid the palm of her hand against the bruise, drawing the pain out of the muscles there. The tense line of Braeden’s shoulders relaxed a little, and she slumped forward, before realizing what was happening and shoving Laura’s hand away by the wrist.

“Hey! Did I say you could do that?”

“Goddamit, take the help, Braeden! Why is everything such a struggle with you?”

“Maybe cause I don’t just roll right over for you?”

“No, because you won’t work with me at all!” Laura snapped, and then took a measured step backward. “I don’t understand you. I don’t understand _this_. It feels like all you do is rile me up, and for whatever reason I enjoy being riled up when it’s you. So I figure, hey maybe that means we can talk, have a conversation, maybe work out our shit. But no, you swat that idea out of the air as soon as I even think about it. What do you want, Braeden? What about me bothers you so much?”

“You wanna know what bothers me? It bothers me that you keep a leash on yourself twenty four seven, and then expect everyone else to keep a leash on themselves too. It bothers me that you don’t think anyone should act or think or behave outside of what you think is normal. It bothers me that you’re constantly trying to direct people where to go, trying to make other people’s decisions, trying to be in charge.”

“I am in charge, I’m the alpha!”

Braeden snorted, but it was a cruel sound.

“Yeah, okay.”

“No, I am. I--” Laura sighed. “I have to make the decisions, I have to make all the plans, I have to protect people. I don’t have a choice. I’m the alpha, I can’t relax ever. When I do, I make mistakes, and people in this pack end up strapped down to the Nemeton as a sacrifice.”

She winced, her whole face screwing up, at the memory of Derek and Jennifer. That had been before Braeden showed up, before their relationship (or friendship with sex, or whatever), and before he’d finally gotten the stones up to pursue Stiles romantically. Jennifer had been a comfort Derek shouldn’t have been afforded, a girlfriend outside the pack that Laura didn’t hound him about or check up on. It had been a mistake. Their lives were filled with too many mistakes.

“Oh, yeah, big Alpha Hale, so burdened. You know other packs don’t work like this, right? It’s not one person taking on every responsibility.”

Laura scowled, “Yeah, they act like they have it together in front of outsiders, but the alpha always--”

“No, the alpha doesn’t.”

Braeden dropped the bag of peas on the counter with a wet smack and braced her hands beside it. With one foot she reached out and hooked a barstool, then drug it across the tile so it bumped against Laura’s hip.

“For once in your life, sit down and let someone else talk.”

For once in her life, and against her immediate instinct, Laura sat, wondering the whole way down why she was doing it.

“Look, I know you’ve interacted with a lot of packs. I know you grew up in one. But you’ve never been involved in the internal structure, making plans with the alpha, watching how they delegate. All that stuff is kept behind the curtain for you, and with your parents you were probably too young. I have seen it though, up close and in person, and I can tell you from experience that only the douchey unstable alphas expect total control like you do.”

She held a hand up to cut Laura’s objections off at the pass.

“I guess you don’t want that much control, if you’re telling the truth now, but frankly it doesn’t matter. Good intentions don’t count for shit if you’re carrying out the same actions. You’re going to burn yourself out like a roman candle if you keep going like this, and if you truly don’t want it to be this way, then quit the insecure bullshit and change it. Assign tasks to the others that make it seem like you actually consider them competent adults. Utilize your allies instead of just hoarding them. Let yourself wrestle in the dirt occasionally.” The corner of her mouth ticked up in a smirk. “And if you feel like doing it with me, that’s cool. Just, maybe next time we should do it on pack property. Fewer witnesses.”

Laura returned the smirk, the knot in her stomach an inch tighter than it had been in weeks.

“Like you could keep up with me.”

“You’d have the advantage, except you constantly handicap yourself with the way you dress.”

“Shut up, you only harp on that because you secretly like it.” She chuckled, batted at Braeden’s arm, and then when Braeden didn’t move out of the way of her touch her smile widened. “You do. You totally do, you’re pulling pigtails back!”

“Shut up, Hale,” Braeden said, and scooped up the bag of peas to press against her skin again.

Laura’s eyes strayed to that same skin with the motion, and a thread of nervousness wound its way up her spine. She cleared her throat, averted her eyes to the side before they could dip too low.

“Well. If you were a guy I’d probably ask if you wanted to relieve some tension right about now, but since we both know I’m new to the, um...to...” she gestured broadly at Braeden.

“Tits?” she asked.

“Yeah. Um. I feel like I should set aside some time first to figure out how not to embarass myself. But. Next week? After the pack meeting, would you want to...eat? Food?”

Braeden sighed through her nose, her smile softening. It wasn’t exactly kind, Laura didn’t think anyone would get the caliber of kindness that Derek and his kicked puppy demeanor pulled out of her, but it was open and flirtatious and that was the best she could hope for under the circumstances.

Braeden leaned forward and scrubbed her cheek against the top of Laura’s head, a particularly wolfish endearment that made Laura swat at her indignantly to push her away.

“God, I love making the big bad wolf girl blush,” she laughed, “Sure. It’s a date.”

**Author's Note:**

> Would you like to know what planner Laura uses? No? You couldn't care less?
> 
> Well, too bad because my brain wouldn't just let me fill in random details and I went and found a planner that would fit her needs to use for the two paragraphs where it is relevant. It's this one: https://www.amazon.com/Gazelle-Planner-Pro-Organization-Management/dp/B06XP7P1J6/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1518040251&sr=8-3&keywords=detailed+planner
> 
> To Jack, who always convinces me to write more. Your comment on the other one made me squee, and then I opened a google doc, and then I did not close if for six and a half hours.


End file.
